With this masonry fire pit plan, you can skip the concrete and mortar. Instead, use that time to build our rustic log benches. You'll be sitting around a fire on a cool evening before you know it.

How to Build a Masonry Fire Pit

How to Build a Masonry Fire Pit

My wife and I love lighting a big fire in the backyard to cap off a day of entertaining. But building a pyre on the lawn left an ugly charred circle that grew larger over time. It made me cringe the next morning; it was like a visual hangover. We also worried that a wind-blown ember could torch the nearby woods.

I considered building a traditional brick fire pit on a concrete footing, but that's no small undertaking or expense. The first step would be to dig a 30-inch-deep footing trench down through rocky soil. Then I'd have to get the concrete into the trench. Even if I opted to get the material delivered, it's not easy lugging it by wheelbarrow. Mixing it by hand also seemed like a backbreaker. So I abandoned the idea of traditional masonry. Investigating chimineas and steel fire rings at a nearby home center, my wife and I discovered the Fossil Stone Fire Pit from Natural Concrete Products, a $500 kit of concrete blocks and a steel fire ring.

Much to my surprise, a buddy and I constructed the pit in 4 hours. When night fell, I kindled a big fire. Friends gathered, and I relaxed with a cold beer. The pit looked great and safely contained the fire without a burnt ring of grass the next day.

Prepare a Site

Prepare a Site

Here's what not to do: Build the pit under low-hanging limbs or power lines. Also, avoid putting it over or near a septic tank, leaching field, well head, or property line. Local laws will almost certainly require you to position a structure of this type a given distance from your neighbor's plot, not to mention your own house. Check the codes at the town hall or the fire department.

After my buddy—Roy Berendsohn, Popular Mechanics' senior home editor—and I had located the ideal spot in my yard, we drove a stake at the approximate center of the pit, looped a mason's line around the stake, and then tied the line around a can of white landscape spray paint, with which I created a 102-inch-diameter circle. This is large enough to accommodate the pit, whose outside diameter is 66 inches, and a surrounding 18-inch band of River Jacks gravel.

To create a base for the pit and gravel, we dug a hole 4 inches deep bordered by the painted circle and dumped in enough crushed stone to fill a few wheelbarrows. (I used 2A Modified, a common road-building material in my area; check for something similar at your local stone yard.) After raking the stone to a depth of about 2 inches, we compacted it with a hand tamper.

For aesthetic reasons and to ensure the fire-pit blocks align properly, it's important to build the pit's walls on a level surface. So we marked a 68-inch-diameter circle (a couple inches wider than the outer wall of the pit) on the compacted stone, then used a 4-foot mason's level to check the surface. We weren't as fussy about leveling the rest of the stone, since it would be covered just by the gravel.